Cathie from Canada

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Jaywalking in Ferguson

Ferguson makes 2.6 million dollars a year from court fees. In 2013, the court "disposed of 24,532 warrants and 12,018 cases, or about 3 warrants and 1.5 cases per household."
There's your smoking gun. If it seems the town of Ferguson sees protesters as something less than human and more like cattle that have escaped their pen, it may be because the town has been "farming" their mostly-black population as a vital source of revenue for a good long time. In Ferguson, a ticket for jaywalking can be the gateway to repeated jail stays, homelessness, and a lifetime of poverty.

The white paper which Hunter is discussing is here.
So maybe this helps to explain why Michael Brown was trying to get away from a jaywalking charge -- he didn't have the $275 fine.

I heard Barbars Erenreich discussing this topic on the radio a while ago. It's not just Ferguson, lots of towns hit the poorest people with fines they can't pay which lead to more fines, late feed, etc, Some places send parents a bill for their kids' room and board in juvenile detention, then jail parents if they can't pay. It's really horrific.